Man threatens to kidnap Arundel woman’s son in ‘horrendous’ social media stalking

An Arundel woman who was one of four stalked on social media has seen her stalker sentenced.

Nicholas Orloff, 40, from Birkdale Drive, Crawley, was charged with four counts of stalking involving serious alarm or distress following a complex Sussex Police investigation.

He pleaded guilty to each of the offences and appeared at Lewes Crown Court on Tuesday 30 October. He was given a two year suspended sentence, a rehabilitation order and a restraining order on all four victims, Sussex Police said.

According to police, officers were first alerted to ‘the torrent of messages’ from Orloff in July 2017 when the woman from Arundel reported the harassment to Sussex Police.

The woman, who is in her 50s, had received private messages from a number of fake social media accounts stating they knew where she lived and threatened to kidnap her son, police said.

Orloff then posted details about the victim on the same fake accounts. The second victim, a London woman in her 40s, saw one of these and told Sussex Police she had been harassed for six months by the same profile.

On 26 July 2017, Orloff was arrested at his home address and officers seized the computers from the premises. He was released under investigation and the enquiries continued.

Police traced the other two victims to Crawley and Scotland.

After a ‘painstaking’ investigation, officers traced two more victims; a woman living in Scotland and a woman from Crawley.